Our LGH, Our AFL and Our health

Posted by Michael on Jul 7, 2010 in News | 0 comments

It was the season for arguing differing opinions over the last five weeks – a long parliamentary session by any standard.  Clearly the Lab-Grn Government has been rattled at having been found out for breaking numerous local and statewide election promises…. In the parliament, I took the opportunity to take aim at Labor and Green Ministers who have failed to keep their promises on a range of issues.  Here is my contribution with regard to health, our hospital and our footy:

Mr FERGUSON – I want to thank the minister for her role in Estimates and for the opportunity that the Parliament provides for members of both the Government and the Opposition. While it might occasionally look fierce and feisty, it is a very good process. I think on reflection, if I may say so for both sides concerned, it helps us all to prepare and be better briefed on our portfolio responsibilities. We owe that to our constituents. If it does occasionally get a bit fiery, that is a small price to pay if it helps us resolve issues of importance to members of the community. In response to the Estimates day that was spent with Minister O’Byrne in her role with Tourism and Health, I have a number of comments I would like to contribute today. To me the most important of all those issues – and of course time does not permit me to go into all of them – is the Launceston General Hospital.

I have consistently said that the LGH is one of the best features of our health system in Tasmania. It is not very helpful today to pore over comparative stats, but the fact is that it performs very well in relation to the funding and resourcing that it receives, and the outcomes that are generated as a result. You need only take the average surgical ward in terms of the specialist staff available – surgeons, anaesthetists and so on – and compare the figures, and you will see that you get a much better bang for your buck at the LGH than at some of its peers.

I have said it before and I say it again today, I am very disappointed with the Government. It promised $130 million over five years to boost staffing at the LGH. I know that the Government will want to continue to say, ‘Well, we’ve only funded it over four years, the fifth year is still an outlying year and we’ll get to that’. I understand that, but the point is that the Treasury costings, which were produced on the basis of the Government’s policy, made it quite clear that the Government’s promise – the Labor Party’s promise – was an annual top up of $26 million for the LGH. When I attended on the committee, the minister at the Table said that -

Ms O’Byrne – The tertiary costings don’t have that for the first two years. It’s the -

Mr FERGUSON – When the minister was at the Table, one of the early comments made was, ‘We intended to have majority government.’ I think that line of thought perhaps might have eventuated in the Greens getting some of the blame for this. The second comment was, ‘We have met 75 per cent of our commitments and we aim to meet 100 per cent of our commitments over the life of the Government’.

Frankly, I would have to say, on listening to the minister on that occasion and on poring over the Hansard since then, that she has set herself an impossible challenge, because what the Government has done is to achieve cost savings to that promise by deferring the employment of the promised 260 staff. So by deferring the employment and making patients wait longer for their health services, you have effectively reduced the need for the lost $69 million. I put it to the minister, does that mean there will be $70 million in the outlying year? I suggest that the lost $69 million will likely never make it back into the system, and that is because by 2014-15, the annual amount of additional funding required to maintain the staff will be more like the $26 million per year.

So I would say to the minister -

Ms O’Byrne – Not until it -

Mr FERGUSON – who interjects, congratulations. Your Government’s decision to defer the employment of staff and withhold the promised health services from your constituents, my constituents, has saved you around $43 million in today’s terms. I look forward to my maths being corrected by the minister if she truly believes I am in the wrong. I would say either show me the maths or show me the money.

What is galling about the position that she has taken now is that we are to somehow take the Government on trust that funding will be available in a budget which is not even expected until after another election. Then the minister said – I think clutching at straws – ‘You just want some media’. Well, this is what I find so annoying from my old nemesis, Minister Michelle O’Byrne. She gets -

Ms O’Byrne – Nemesis?

Mr FERGUSON – Well, I am just being rhetorical there. We have been opposing each other for a while, I guess. She gets very narky when I bring up subjects which highlight her failure to the very people that she so often likes to think of as the people for whom she is working here. Instead of trying to change the subject or questioning the motives of the Opposition in legitimately bringing up this important issue, why not just front up that your election promise of $130 million has gained the status of a lie to voters, as has so often been the case with election commitments, where we are told, ‘Don’t worry, the money will turn up on the never-never’.

I am also very committed on the issue of the Government delivering on its promise that it made to people with Parkinson’s Disease and from the Liberals’ point of view I think we are broadening that out more generally to people with neurological disorders. The Liberals promised three dedicated specialist nurses, the Government matched that promise and then bettered it by saying that they would actually provide four and I know that members of the community with Parkinson’s are very anxious about the absence of any funding in the Budget for this initiative. I have read and understood the minister’s comments and I have to say that I am willing to take her on trust on this but we will need to see some action. I just want to put on the record that I will be looking for and hoping that soon we will see evidence that the Government is undergoing the recruitment process for those nurses and helping them, if they need it, to gain the necessary specialist training.

Time is getting away from me but on palliative care funding I applaud the Government for matching the Liberals’ promised commitment. It came very late in the piece but I am a member of the Northern Hospice and Palliative Care Foundation and I know that they took great comfort in knowing that, irrespective of the outcome of the election, the funding would be there for the additional beds for palliative care. It is a very important issue and, given that we are now facing another discussion on euthanasia, I think it is great that we will see progress and I would be supporting you, Minister, the day that I see evidence of those funds being rolled out.

Finally, can I just come briefly to AFL in Tasmania? It has been a longstanding arrangement that all parts of the community understood that AFL games would be attracted to York Park and that international and shield cricket would be attracted to Bellerive and I would say that my political radar is up. I am sensing ambivalence, I am sensing a changing of language from members of the Government, including the northern members, and I would say that we want to be careful here in listening to the words of the Premier. He is now using a different set of words to the ones that we are accustomed to; he is now saying, ‘Nothing we do in football in Tasmania will come at the expense of the four games at York Park or in the north’ and I just want to say we are watching this process. There was a difference of rhetoric between the Wednesday and the Thursday of last week at Estimates and then suddenly a meeting in Hobart with a member of another football club. So my radar is up and I am watching and I, for one, will speak up for football in Launceston because that is what the community expects from all of us, particularly northern members, to be speaking in that fashion.